West Stockwith

The entry for this parish in the Southwell & Nottingham Church History Project [http://southwellchurches.nottingham.ac.uk/west-stockwith/hhistory.php] [accessed 4 November 2018] notes: " The earliest record of a church occurs in the Register of Archbishop Melton. On 21 April 1334, the archbishop granted a faculty to the inhabitants of West Stockwith, in Misterton parish, to have services in their new chapel. We may reasonably assume therefore that this chapel was built in or around 1333-4. The faculty explains the reasons why the chapel was built, due to the distance of the hamlet from the parish church at Misterton, and ‘the dangerous roads, and other perils and hinderences’. A suitable priest was to be supplied to perform Mass and to celebrate other canonical hours. The chapel was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary (‘beate Marie’). It is known that this chapel was still standing in 1559, and in 1677, Robert Thoroton wrote that Misterton church was dedicated to All Saints, with Stockwith chapel, but does not elaborate further on details of the chapel. It was evidently a simple chapel-of-ease for the villagers of West Stockwith in the parish of Misterton. There is no trace today of the medieval chapel which is said to have stood on the site of the Aegir flats in Canal Lane." This same source informs that a new church was built here: "The church was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it was consecrated, on 30 September 1732 by Sir Wm. Dawes, then Archbishop of York, upon the same conditions as the first chapel – that the parishioners should receive the Holy Sacrament at Misterton on the feasts of Easter and Pentecost, and pay their portion towards the repair of that church. In a later faculty (1962) documented in this same source a reference is made to the 18th-century font of this church: "To resite the font in the body of the church opposite the disused door to the graveyard", one of six items that were planned as part of the 1963 restoration of the Georgian church. [NB: we have no information on the font of the original ca. 1334 chapel-of-ease here]. The village of East Stockwith does not appear to have had a medieval church or chapel; it has a modern church, St Peter's, with a 19th-century font in it [http://www.slha.org.uk/photogallery/?thistopic=Churches_InteriorFonts] [accessed 4 November 2018].